Post-Award Follow-Ups: A Detailed Guide

Use post-award follow-ups to collect and manage post-award items from applicants such as thank-you letters, acceptance forms, photos, event RSVPs, school bursar addresses, etc. A few things need to be in place in order for post-award follow-ups to work properly.

Configuring Post Award Follow-Ups

Under the Additional Requirements tab at the scholarship level in the After Awarding section, set up these items. Click Add Question to view your options for creating follow-up questions (click here to learn more about different question types).

You can re-use questions by searching for the question you want to re-use in the Add Question section.

The Additional Requirements tab of a scholarship, with the After Awarding section and its Add Question button used to create post-award follow-up questions.

Use caution when re-using questions, as sharing a question also shares an applicant’s responses on any scholarship it appears on. If you require donor-specific thank-you letters, for example, you should refrain from re-using the same thank-you letter question across multiple scholarships.

The Add Question panel with its search box, used to re-use an existing question rather than creating a new one.

Publish the scholarship award status

This should be done after you’ve selected recipients for a given scholarship and distributed award amounts to each awardee (to learn more about publishing scholarship award statuses, click here).

Publishing a scholarship’s award status causes two things to happen:

1. The award decision becomes visible to the applicant through the Scholarships list view:

The applicant's Scholarships list, showing the published award decision alongside each scholarship they applied to.

2. The follow-ups are created and are visible on the applicant’s dashboard:

The student portal's Dashboard, boxed in the left nav, showing the post-award follow-up items created for an awarded applicant when the award status was published, with the first item's Continue button highlighted.

Administrators can access scholarship follow-ups via the Tasks tab in the main navigation menu.

The Task Board reached from the Tasks item in the left-hand navigation, where scholarship follow-ups are managed.

Post Award Follow-Up Notifications

You may choose to include information about follow-up work in the Award Notification template. You can customize the Award template by going to the Emails tab > Templates (to learn more about this feature, click here). Here is an example of how you might call attention to follow-ups in an award letter:

The Emails Compose screen with a fully drafted award notification open, the message body boxed to show the recipient's next steps to accept the award and complete their post-award follow-up work.

Note: AwardSpring does not automatically notify the student of pending follow-up work.

Another option for notifying students of follow-up work is by emailing them directly from the Tasks tab. To do this, click the checkbox for the students you would like to email, and a drop-down menu will appear at the top. From the Select bulk action drop-down menu, select Send Email.

The Task Board with follow-up rows selected and Send Email chosen from the Select bulk action menu.

Then click Confirm.

The confirmation step of the bulk Send Email action on the Task Board, with the Confirm button highlighted.

You’ll be taken to the Emails > Compose screen. The recipient field will be pre-populated with the emails of the recipients in your follow-up queue.

The Emails Compose screen arrived at from the Task Board, with the recipient field already filled in with the addresses from the follow-up queue.

You will then need to draft and send an email to the recipients explaining that they have follow-up work to do. This message could be less of a direct award notification and focus strictly on follow-up work.

Once the student logs in to complete their follow-up, they can click Continue for each scholarship on their dashboard:

The student portal's Dashboard, boxed in the left nav, showing a follow-up item for an awarded scholarship with the Continue button highlighted.

The follow-up screen will look slightly different depending on which question types were used. Once the recipient answers all required questions, the Submit Follow-Up button will light up, and they can click it:

A follow-up submission screen with all required questions answered (accepted award terms, an uploaded thank-you letter) and the Submit Follow-Up button highlighted.

Once a student submits a follow-up requirement, the pending requirements section will no longer display it.

Managing Post Award Follow-Ups

When you have follow-up work to review, you will see a number in parentheses next to your Tasks menu item and on your Dashboard.

Click a row to expand the follow-ups in an In Progress status to view the recipient’s follow-up work:

An expanded follow-up row on the Task Board, showing the recipient's submitted response, the accepted award terms, and the Disburse, Cancel, and Request Revision action options.

Decide what to do with the follow-up item and click Save:

Disburse: You’re satisfied with the submitted work, and no further action is needed. The student will remain in the “Award” state at the scholarship level.
Cancel: This means you’ve decided to revoke this applicant’s award. The student’s scholarship-level status will be updated to “Denied.”
Request Revision: If you need the recipient to resubmit their follow-up work for some reason (wrong file uploaded, poor grammar, etc.), type a message to them in the feedback for resubmission box, choose Request Revision from the action menu, and click Save. This will email the applicant to let them know they need to resubmit their work. They can do so when they log back into AwardSpring. When they resubmit their work, the follow-up item’s status will change back to In Progress.